8 (free) Killer Tips on Increasing Traffic

I am by no means an expert on the social side of life, but I did learn alot from the power of Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Twitter for example. When you first start a blog and you aim on monetizing it, you want visitors… and alot of them. You can’t go anywhere without them so you will need to do some stuff to make the visitor stay and come back to your blog.

I’ve come up with 8 simple, yet effective ways on increasing traffic to your blog in almost an instant.

1.  Yahoo! Answers

This is one of those easy Search Engine traffic grabbers. Google tends to put the questions that are asked on Yahoo!, even if they are a bit relevant, high on the first page of search results. Although Yahoo! stated that they forbid playing and abusing their system,  however I don’t see a point leaving a link at the end of your answer to your own blog if the content is relevant and provides extra information. Sign up at answers.yahoo.com.

2.  Become a guest blogger

I see this technique being used by ProBlogger alot. It’s a great way of increasing post frequency per though. Guest posts tend to have great impact on readers and let them stick to not just your own blog, but also for the person who wrote it. If you post a quality article on a blog that’s popular, the readers are bound to visit your site looking for more and hopefully subscribe to your blog.

3.  Make a video tutorial 

This has the added benefit of a viral marketing effect, especially if your video tutorial solves a common problem easily. If readers really enjoy it, they are most likely to spread the word and bring in new visitors to your blog.

4.  Introduce yourself to others

Often your biggest readers will be your rivals or other bloggers that are your peers. By peers, I mean that they are on the same level of traffic, content, etc. as you are. Email your peers to introduce yourself and mention that you subscribed to their blog and found the content interesting. Leave it at just that, and don’t ask for link exchanges or ask them to subscribe to your blog in return. But do leave a link to your blog at the end. That way they might visit your blog and subscribe, or even better write a short review of your site if they find it really worthwhile.

5.  Submit your top articles

By this I don’t mean submitting your article to an article directory, because they never seem to bring in significant traffic. Submit your best articles (that are getting the most page views and comments) to Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and others. Don’t forget to include a ’submit this article’ button on your page to allow your readers to vote on the article. If you’re lucky you might even make it to the front page. One word of warning though – don’t submit every article you write because you run the risk of getting banned for spamming.

In my opinion, small blogs do not have the necessary reader-base to get to the front page. I’ve never had luck with Digg, getting 10-15 diggs at the very most. But I’ve heard small  blogs can make it big on StumbleUpon. If you run a video games/technology blog however, I recommend submitting to n4g.com.

6.  Make your blog Search Engine friendly

Everyone is obsessed with search engine optimization because it’s the biggest source of free traffic. Just don’t over do it – the key to SEO is moderation. While I’m no SEO guru, a keyword rich title and URL, description and keyword tags does the trick for me. Also consider going for the 3-4 word phrases, since it’s more easy to rank higher with them on Google.

7.  Link out to other Bloggers

This is the best way to gain the attention of your peers. I have found that many bloggers visit my article just out of curiosity, to see what I’ve written about them. If they love what they read, they write a short article and link back to me. One example is Videobloggingtips.

Tip 8 is, which requires a whole different approach, forums. Read a detailed post about it here on DuoBlogger.

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1. Blogging tips for beginners
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3. Use These 10 Tips to Write Your Most Popular Post Ever